Читать книгу The Flying U Strikes - B.M. Bower - Страница 7

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DEEP in the Badlands Chip lived the life of the gray wolves that slunk into the shadows when he rode near. Like the gray wolves he prowled up and down the canyons, though he took the trail at dawn, when the wolves were slinking home from the hunt. Twice he came upon fresh carcasses of beef, too late to catch the killers in the act. For hours at a time he would lie hidden on some high point and watch the country below, using the field glasses he had bought for that purpose in Billings.

On such a day, when he had been nearly a week down there by himself, he lay in a nest between two boulders on a ridge and saw four men ride single file down the gulch beneath him; Weary, Ted Culver, Jack Bates and big, slow-voiced Dick Bird, whom the Flying U boys feared for his sudden rages—but whom they called Dickybird behind his back because the name was so grotesquely inappropriate.

Through his field glasses he watched them lonesomely out of sight, tempted to hail them and hear the sound of a human voice once more. He half rose from his place to shout down to them the chance they were taking of being shot, then settled back again out of sight. They weren't such fools they didn't know all he could tell them about risk. He would be the fool, advertising himself now, after going to all the trouble he had to make his presence in that country a dead secret.

Probably they were down there for the same reason he was,—to catch the killers of beef, if they could. They must know that a man cached in the rocks as he was could drop them one by one out of their saddles—like shooting grouse off a pine branch.

Thinking of that, he swung the glasses slowly along the opposite hillside, holding them startled on a wisp of something like smoke drifting across his field of vision. While he watched uneasily, listening for the crack of a rifle, the wisp thickened, widened, until rocks and bushes were completely obscured.

Fog! He lowered the glasses and saw it come flowing into the gulch, reaching with long gray brush strokes to every rock and jutting crag, painting a smooth blankness wherever it touched. He glanced down into the canyon behind him and saw it was the same; and even up where he crouched, the clammy gray was enfolding him. He might have expected it, he thought disgustedly, when the wind died that morning and the air had that muggy, damp feel. Damn such weather, anyway. If he had to waste much more time getting nowhere, the weather would be so warm the damned thieves would have to lay off until fall—unless they were devilish enough to butcher and let the meat rot. They were capable even of that, in his opinion.

Well, the boys would head for home now—and be lucky to make it, if this fog drifted in any worse. And that went for himself, if he didn't slide down off that ridge mighty quick and get back to where he had left Mike. He was inclined now to wish that he had not chosen his camp in the most inaccessible place he could find where a horse could get in and out; a grassy hollow that must have been an old blowhole ages ago, with no outlet except one narrow, twisting fissure between two red hills. The Badlands were full of strange places like that, hard to find even when one knew their location. He hadn't counted on fog.

His horse was tied in a thicket where the grass was too scanty to attract stock and the men he was looking for would not be likely to come. Maybe a mile back to him, the way Chip would have to go, and the sooner he covered that mile the better.

By the time he had reached the foot of the ridge, the gray wall had closed in until he could not see ten feet, and a glance at his watch told him that it was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon—too few hours from darkness to please him much. The sooner he got to camp the better.

He was picking his way carefully along the water-gouged base of the hill, looking for the place where he had climbed up to the grassy slope above the loose red wall of the bank. A tricky place where a fellow could easily sprain an ankle or even break his leg, if he stepped off the edge and took a tumble down that bank. It was considerably farther along where he had started up. He remembered now that he had followed the top of the ridge down quite a long way, keeping under cover as much as possible while he looked for a vantage point with a view into both canyons. He had not come this way where the hill cut straight down, almost as if railroad graders had been at work cutting a level roadbed through.

Damn such a country, anyway. The short grass, curled and matted under the winter storms, was slick as wet soap here, where the slope was steepest. Twice he had to lean and clutch the grass alongside him to keep from going over when his riding boots slipped on fog-jeweled tufts. What he should have done, he now realized, was go back along the top of the ridge to the barren, rocky fold where he had climbed up. But the hill was too steep for that now.

How far he had gone he could not tell with any certainty; half a mile or more, he guessed. The cut bank seemed lower along there, and in places he could almost see the red soil of the canyon floor. Too far down to risk a jump, however, unless he had to do it. So he kept on, edging along with his rifle balanced in his left hand, his right outstretched ready to grab a handful of grass if he felt his feet slipping.

And it was then, while he was sweating over that precarious footing, that he felt and heard rather than saw something just beneath him. Whether it was an animal or a man, he could not at first determine. He waited, peering over the edge, a growing excitement quickening his pulse so that he felt the blood beating against his temples. Two minutes—three—and a breath of air stirred the gray blanket so that for an instant he saw.

Twenty feet or so down the sheer bank a man was stooping over a carcass lying sprawled on the ground; a beef critter, he knew by the chunky head and wide stubby horns. It was only a glimpse he got, then the fog blanket swung in and blotted the scene.

Chip's teeth snapped together on the oath he had almost shouted. That would have warned the fellow, given him a chance to duck into the fog and get away. And here he was, after almost a week of hunting him, skinning a Flying U critter as bold as you please! If the damned fog would lift again. . . .

He jerked up his rifle, meaning to take aim and wait for another glimpse of the thief. The movement threw him off balance as a treacherous grass tuft suddenly gave way under the foot uphill. As he threw his weight instinctively upon the other foot, that slipped as if he had stepped on grease. Flailing wildly with both arms, he fought to recover his balance—and shot over the grassy brink in a sickening plunge.

"What the hell!" The man below yelped as if the words were jarred out of him, when Chip came hurtling down upon him. Had he remained stooping, his back must have been broken by the impact, but he straightened just as Chip landed in a heap on the carcass.

Dazed, the wind knocked out of him and his rifle gone, Chip half rose, groping blindly, clutching for a hold on the thief before the fellow got away. A fist struck him a vicious blow on the side of the head, but his arms went out in a sweeping, grappling motion, got a handful of coat and hung on grimly, as a sharp pain slashed his upper arm and shoulder. He wondered why he couldn't see, then knew that the landing had jammed his hat down over his eyebrows. And he couldn't let go and yank it up out of the way. The fellow struck again, jerked loose and ran.

By the time Chip had gotten to his feet and pulled up his hat, the fog was folded round him in a chill gray wall. Clattering hoofbeats went up the canyon, were presently muffled and lost in the distance.

All he had to show for the encounter were the burning pain across his shoulder, a handful of torn pocket from somebody's coat, a bruised and aching body and a terrible, consuming rage, the greater because humiliation lay beneath it.